Thursday, May 30, 2013

There’s not
too much more to add to the show this week other than the music itself. This
week on Cabeza de Vaca and Scanner FM we indulge ourselves in some longer tracks that can easily be overlooked as
their qualities are sometimes awkward for different circumstances. In this
sense its nice to have the ability to do a show like this with freedom and no
constraints, so thanks to Scanner FM.

In the show I mention a previous track by
Vtothed on Greta Cottage Workshop which captures the same cosmic/Kosmische
vibe.

As well the
original of DJ Kaos’s “Kosmischer Rukenwind” is quite different from the Quiet
Village remix, and less than half the length!

It is definitely
worth checking out some more material and a little of the biography of In
Aeternam Vale. The track I play on the show was released on Minimal Wavewhose website has a lovely
biographical blurb. Their sound is frighteningly modern at times, not far from
Not Not Fun or 100% Silk, neither is it so dissimilar from DFA or some of the
other “indie dance” stuff around. Watching the old footage as well you cant
help but think of a nerd Suicide.

Here as well is an official promo video for Jay Ahern and Morgan Packard's "Mesa_Sequence" that features about 4:30 of the track.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

“You are
indebted to create good from evil, because there is no other material for it to
be created.”

Robert Penn
Warren

These are
words up on a website called Far From Moscowin which I found some of the only
reliable information on the Udacha label, the focus of our show on Cabeza de Vaca and Scanner FM this week. Deliberately obscure and
yet out in the open, spacey, dreamy and foreign, yet tangible and logical. Such
is Udacha. Their sound is certainly not what you would call a Russian
stereotype; if there was one song today looking for that claim it would be
“Morskaya” by Kompakt legends SCSI-9, with its intense stings and rainy
claustrophobic melodies. But the point of Udacha is exactly this, that it is
not a cliché, but a new way of seeing (or meeting) a country. Certainly in
Barcelona there has been a recent increase in the presence of people from the
east, and not just Russia, but Romania, Ukraine, Poland. On the way to my old
work there was a new Russian bakery and delicatessan that opened up, for
example. Why should this even be mentioned? It seems an important moment, that
after living the Cold War as a youth, and having such a one sided story, that
so long after its end, that suddenly the people, or the descendents from the
other side of that story should suddenly become real, become “available” for
communication.

In
electronic music at least there has been plenty of new stuff from the old eastern
block countries that has come to the fore. Udacha is a prime example, somehow
forging a sound in only a few short releases and more to come. Here is a couple
of recent or upcoming rleases from Russian artists and some notes on the show.

Dirty
Owl

We at
Cabeza de Vaca and Scanner FM are loving Dirty Owl and the design of the SEALT
label stuff. There was never any need to doubt vinyl as a medium, and less so
when you get such wonderful design and presentation. But the image is only one
thing and the music has to match and without having heard any of the other
releases in full, I can only speak for Dirty Owl. Excellent! A lot of
variation, technique and humour as well. Great debut and highly recommended. A
digitial version is now available as the vinyl is pretty rare already.

SEALT

Nina Kraviz

As far as
Nina and “Bubblebathgate” goes, better look for yourself at the original video
and then have a look at the comments and some of the opinion pieces. Quite an
extraordinary reaction to message boards etc that can seem more and more
apathetic. I of course am all for promoting women artists here in whatever way
they want to represent themselves. I try not to resort to positive
discrimination, but where possible I also try to consciously keep a balance of
female artists in the show. The Wire recently highlighted these kinds of issues
and mentioned a website that tries to quantify the number of women in
electronica called Female - Pressure.

One of the
most well known Russian artists Anton Zap has something new coming out soon:

If the show
had been a bit more techno based, I might have put something from Yuka on
instead of Nina Kraviz, although the story is of course an important catalyst.
As well, Yuka hasn’t had a very fresh release, but in any case, looks like an
interesting producer and DJ to keep an eye on.

Alexey
Volkov has also had some interesting techno releases on some good labels
including Semantica, and Terrence Fixmer’s Planete Rouge.

Anyone
looking for free house sounds should check out the label Chevengur Melody who are a Russian deep
hpuse netlabel with some great stuff available on their Bandcamp page. They
have just advanced into physical releases as well.

Friday, May 17, 2013

My oficial round-up
just came out on Resident Advisor , so here I will only
add a few details.

Firstly, Finn of Tomland who played every
day all day and then also at two additional shows around Barcelona before hand.
We paid tribute to his SonuoS label by opening this weeks Cabeza de Vaca show
on Dadub with an Yves de Mey remix of Valanx.

Here is a DJ set from FLIM Open Air 2012 which
shows you the kind of sound that he wielded to great effect and gets him gigs
like a celebrated slot opening the Echochord club in Copenhagen and in his home
town on Malmö.

The three
best acts of the festival were (in no particular order).

Yui Onodera

Japanese
ambient artist and former architect played on the opening night, mixing field
recordings and cinematic tones into a shoegaze-style cloudscape. He has played
and recorded with the likes of Celer and is running the Critical Path label
who are just about to release a 2CD compilation of ambient music by 15
different artists all based around the recording and manipulation of field
recordings. The release comes with a 16 page booklet and features artists such
as forementioned Yves de Mey, Lawrence English, Janek Schaeffer, Simon Scott
(former drummer from Slowdive with releases on 12K and more) and of course Onodera
himself. The CD is out 5th June and can be bought from Whereabouts Records
to begin with.

Mathias
Delplanque

Frenchman
Mathias Delplanque was one of the most difficult to pin down and therefore one
of the most enduring performers of the festival. His music is both outwardly
abstract and yet intensely intimate, claustrophobic even. His album “Chutes”
from which the track below comes from is stunning. Released on the French Baskaru
label it feels like an intense dialogue of glyphs and symbols written out like
an evanescent audio story board.

Jacob Kirkegaard

Danish
artist Jacob Kirkegaard performed one of the most physical sets, alongside Mika
Vainio (brute and guttural physical noise) and Francisco López (geometric
sounds arranged in three dimensions). His set was a perfect complement to these
two, using physical force (at times) and great spatial accuracy. At one point I
actually started to get anxious almost, because I could hear the intersecting
point of the sine waves in the most precise, smallest point in my head that was
an unshakeable magnet of consciousness and attention. Only once he started to
move it about the room and smooth it with more languid ambience did I calm
down. I managed to buy his album “Imperia” recorded with Tobias Kirstein which
perfectly captures some of the elements of the performance. The original was
released in 2011, but the vinyl issue did not emerge until 2012 on the Posh
Isolation 091 label from Denmark. The album was recorded at Barseback Nuclear
Powerplant in 2004. The powerplant is located in Sweden just 20km from the Copenhagen.
After years of pressure, the Danish government have finally managed to close
the plant down.

A special
prize to Czech artist Slavek Kwi (Artificial Memory Trace) who played half the
set under blinding strobes with quadrophonic sound, but performed the greatest
of aural tricks by weaving though the air above the audience a metal flag, that
created a sound that was beyond three dimensions of space. He also performed “underwater”
meaning, suspending objects and contact microphones in a tub of water. Very
special indeed.

“We think
that music is a strong mirror of social structures and dynamics, so sometimes
we have the perception that lots of underground music in general has the same
structures of the things that the artists want to criticize...and it happens
because of market rules and show biz.”

“A mirror
of social structures and dynamics” is perhaps the best way to describe the
music of Italian duo Dadub (Daniele Antezza and Giovanni Conti). There is
certainly a heavy feeling of mechanics, of wheels and mechanisms that turn the
great machine. The lack of colour also suggests industrial smoke over the city
or emptiness. But then there is something cosmic too. Maybe it is the black,
infinite void that recedes behind them? Perhaps it is tidal flow of their
tracks, building and closing in like a flower budding forwards and backwards,
or a pulsating mouth ready to consume? Why else call your album “You are
eternity?”

There are
two good interviews out there, one at Resident Advisor dating from March 2012 which is focused more on
the technical side of things, and from where the first quote comes from, and
the second is over at Juno Plus and dates from February
this year on the eve of the albums’ release so is much more focused in this
direction.

I mention
the politics of their music and also of Stroboscopic Artefacts in general which
is an important issue for electronic music to deal with in general. The track “Truth”
features a couple of samples discussing “free market economics” and their
obvious failure.

Lucy’s 12” “Why don’t you change?”, the
first release from the label and still one of the best, also featured a sample
from the revered Indian writer and thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti dating from 1980.

Strangely the sample, or a smaller part of
it, also turned up in another recent track, Tube and Berger’s “Imprint of
pleasure” which has been charting well by DJs, but is a rather cringey
quasi-Ballaeric feel good track.

In the later track, the emphasis is on pleasure
rather than the contemplation of it and the desire to change as Lucy
emphasises, two opposite stand points reflected in the music itself: ne tough
and smart and the other mindless and in pursuit of pleasure.The track "Ilya" that I play from the "Moand VIII" release is also a homage to another thinker, this time Russian-born, but nationalised Belgian Ilya Prigogine, who worked on atomic physics and a Nobel laureate.

Dadub had a couple of tracks out on the Killekill label recently as well, one on the "Killekill Megahits" compilation and more recently on the "Krake 001" festival compilation.

I forgot to mention that Lucy also remixes
one of the tracks on the Oscar Mulero EP “Black Propaganda remixes part 1”,
tackling the track “To Convince for the Untruth”. A second part has just been
released too. Lucy's track is great, and the third is by Shifted he we already had a special on, so I thought I would play Developer this time to mix it up a bit.